Electronic commerce is increasingly becoming a part of everyday life. In particular, the rapid growth of the Internet and World Wide Web has lead to a corresponding increase in the ability to acquire goods and services remotely.
The desire for privacy has lead to an increase in a number of services that maintain in secret the identity of users of those services. For example, a variety of anonymous e-mail services are currently available whereby recipients of an e-mail are not able to associate the sending entity's identification with the e-mail. While such services help maintain privacy, they also provide a means by which malicious parties may act more freely. Furthermore, in a purchase transaction, such anonymity could be used to perpetuate fraud against vendors. In prior U.S. patent applications having Ser. Nos. 09/944,739; 09/976,637; 10/099,446 and 10/098,261 we described systems for conducting transactions, obtaining recommendations and verifying usage rights in an anonymous fashion. While these prior applications teach various advances in the art, they are each premised on a centralized implementation. That is, in each prior application, a third party “anonymity service” is provided to implement the functionality needed to maintain anonymity. However, it is recognized that, in some situations, a distributed implementation may be preferred. Therefore, a need exists for a distributed technique that provides enhanced privacy during e-commerce transactions, but that also provides a degree of accountability such that the opportunity for malicious acts is minimized.